The Show Must Go On

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Big Black Car

Chapter Twenty-Nine Soundtrack: Big Black Car by Gregory Alan Isakov

I've been staring into my tea for an hour, but it's not giving me any answers. I guess I'm not qualified to read tea leaves. Especially when my swirling thoughts are too loud to ignore. Groaning, I down the last lukewarm inch.

Standing, I pace through my living room. It's always been my refuge. Now, the fairy lights feel twee and childish. The coffee table rings aren't charming: they're careless. And why is it always so messy? Why is nothing ever where I need it?

Ben's XBox cables, sprawled by the TV, catch my attention. He'd never put them away, even after I tripped and nearly lost a tooth. He would just laugh and say they'd be out again soon enough.

Without thinking, I grab them and throw them into the drawer, then slam it shut.

The corner feels tidier. Better. More like mine.

What else? The awful whisky poster he hung above the fireplace. I hated seeing a bikini-clad model over my morning coffee. 'It's not a sex thing, babe,' he'd tell me. 'It's a countercultural representation of form and praxis.'

I rip it down. It leaves four BluTack marks, exactly like I told him it would.

Breathing hard, I clutch it against my chest and rip it cleanly down the middle. Form and Praxis, my ass.

I drop it as a text buzzes in my pocket. The two halves drift to the floor. Stupidly, desperately, my first thought is that Ben knows and that I'm in trouble. He's texting me to tell me off. He's texting me to fix everything.

I pull out my phone so quickly I fumble, nearly drop it.

It's not Ben, of course. Ben is dead. It's my mum.

Call me. I just spoke to Laurie and she says you ran off at the wedding. I can't tell you how disappointed we are.

She's disappointed? She's upset that I couldn't get through my dead fiance's family wedding? She's upset that I embarrassed her by quietly leaving an event no one wanted me to attend?

I reply: Try.

Two ticks.

Blue ticks.

No reply.

I collapse on the sofa. It's like all these emotions have churned through me, leaving me panting for breath, hollow and sad.

I can't let Nas affect me like this. One harsh remark about Ben and I'm in turmoil.

But it's not just Nas, really. This has been building for so long.

Mourning, at first, was like everything in the world was sucked away. Feeling not even that I should be dead, but that I was dead. I had died, and Ben had lived, and that's why I couldn't reach him; that's why everything was muffled and grey and time either dragged or sped by, until weeks had passed without the sun moving in the sky.

And then, once the worst was over, the new worst started. The new worst was pretending to be okay, but not too okay. This mostly involved well-meaning questions about how I was coping with the terrible tragedy, and insincere offers to help, and regular calls from Ben's weeping family, who asked me, over and over, to describe how he had died. What had he been wearing? Had he looked afraid? Did he bleed or was it instant?

And then, life went on. Everyone else's, at least. Ben's family called me less and less, and then started calling me names behind my back. It was my fault he had died, they decided. I had never been good enough for him.

And now? Is this still grief, or is this healing, or some terrible third thing that I'm alone in feeling? Is it normal to feel so angry at him?

Ben had been my reason for living. I've realised that slowly, over the last year, as I've found other reasons to stay alive: my job, for one, being paid to be creative and sharing that creativity around the world. My friends, who spent Saturday night drinking and playing and cuddling in my home, who have all texted since offering extravagant sums to replace the TV. Maybe I'll get a dog, too. Maybe I'll travel. Maybe I'll read a really good book, or try some excellent pasta. Maybe those things are, in fact, living.

I'm not ready to stop loving him. I probably never will. But Ben wasn't perfect. He was generous, funny, precociously witty. But he could be careless: careless with my things, careless with my needs. He didn't like it when I stood up for myself, and he didn't always listen when I was struggling. He liked me best when I was laughing—and I often was, with him, but no one can always be happy. I wasn't angry when he was alive. It's taken me years to feel it, but I'm angry now. I'm angry at him, and I love him, and I wish he'd looked after me, and I wish I'd asked him to.

Maybe that's living, too. Letting go.

On my way to make another cup of tea, I take off my engagement ring. My finger feels naked without it, but holding it in my palm, I see that it's just metal and stone. It doesn't have to be more than that. Tomorrow morning, I decide, I'll string it onto a necklace and I'll try a new way to carry it.